Narrator: Daniel Day-Lewis is an unknown celebrity.

His name doesn't always ring a bell.

Neither does his face.

His presence doesn't cause a rampage, and he doesn't have his star on Hollywood Boulevard.

♪♪ And yet, he's widely considered the world's greatest actor, the only winner of three Best Actor Oscars, an all-out record in the history of film.

In the land of the Actors Studio, Daniel Day-Lewis, British by birth, has beaten the Americans at their own game in their own backyard.

♪♪ Except that the actor has nothing of the American self-made man about him.

On the contrary, he's the product of an elite background, which he has both denied and assumed when embodying it on screen.

The story of Daniel Day-Lewis is that of a man in conflict with his origins, forced into hiding in order to find himself.

♪♪ Our guest this morning is the actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

Daniel shot to fame last year when he co-starred in the highly-acclaimed film, "My Beautiful Laundrette," and his success seems set to continue.

Daniel's latest film has already been described as a triumph and a near-miracle after its New York opening.

It's called "A Room with a View," and it's based on the E.M.

Forster novel of the same name.

Narrator: In March 1986, the young and shy Daniel Day-Lewis was thrust into the spotlight with the success of "Room with a View."

The film was released in New York on the same day as "My Beautiful Laundrette."

In the two movies, he portrayed two distinctly opposite Englishmen.

Until then unknown in the States, he immediately became the new British face, a face which could represent all the facets of his homeland.

Freddy, as you well remarked this morning, there are some chaps who are no good for anything but books.

I plead guilty to being such a chap.

Narrator: Although, in person, Daniel Day-Lewis is nothing like that uptight aristocrat, he nonetheless appears to understand him better than anyone.

My heart bleeds for him when I think about him.

He's the sort of person that you imagine you might be in your worst nightmares.

Desperately, desperately self-conscious and pompous.

And he's a kind of, a bound up ascetic who can't open his mouth without clearing a room.

You know, everything he says is just guaranteed to be offensive.

Narrator: A perfect Victorian British snob, but equally believable in the role of a homosexual punk in the working class London of the Thatcher years.

Listen to me, Genghis!

I don't want to fight!

Tough.

Day-Lewis: Stephen taught me an awful lot and he... he recognized that I really didn't know what was going on at all.

Because in effect, it was my first movie... experience.

And um... I think it exasperated him sometimes to the point where he actually invited me into the cutting room with Mick Audsley and said, "You better watch this and see how these things are put together."

♪♪ Narrator: Although the fledgling actor knew little about the movie industry, he was afraid of nothing, took risks, and was already wowing the critics.

Unrecognizable from one film to the next, Daniel Day-Lewis was soon appointed as the heir to the great British actors.

The reason he stood out from the screen despite playing supporting roles, was because he could incarnate two very different worlds that he knew well.

♪♪ Firstly, upper middle class London of the 1950s, the backdrop to his childhood.

♪♪ Daniel Day-Lewis grew up in an upmarket neighborhood among the cultural elite of the capital.

His father, the poet, Cecil Day-Lewis, was an eminent figure.

Later named poet laureate of Britain on April 29th, 1957, he took up his pen to mark the birth of his son in a work not lacking in lyricism.

"Welcome to Earth, my child.

Joy bells of blossom swing.

We timeworn folk renew ourselves at your enchanted spring.

Soon, lips and hands shall grope to try the world.

This speck of clay and spirit shall begin to feed on hope, to learn how truth blows cold and loves betray."

A few bittersweet lines to welcome the boy into this well-to-do family, quite at ease in front of the cameras of the BBC.

There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon, that object he became.

And that object became part of him for the day... Narrator: The Day-Lewis household was just as austere as the official photos lead one to believe.

Language was refined and affection rare.

Raised with his sister, Tamasin, by a strict nursemaid, Daniel was a well-behaved but lonely child.

He was formally forbidden from entering the study of his father, whom he feared as much as he admired.

He knew something to do with writing went on in that study because everything in the house revolved around books.

♪♪ I remember the house where I was born.

The little window where the sun came peeping in at morn.

He never came a wink too soon, nor brought too long a day.

Narrator: Daniel's mother, Jill Balcon, was an intelligent, worldly woman devoted to her husband.

I remember the roses, red and white... Narrator: She would check up on her children's dress and language, but played little part in raising and educating them.

Pretty much confined to the top floor of the house, Daniel and his sister rarely saw their parents.

Day-Lewis: I watched from the top window of our house as they rebuilt from the ground up a cinema that had been bombed during the war.

And they built it into a theatre which is now the Greenwich Theatre.

And my mother always sort of made it clear to anyone that was working at the theatre that the house was open to them if they wanted to just come and relax and spend a bit of time there.

And I got to meet some lovely people during that time.

♪♪ My mother, who had started out her life as an actress, and when she married my father, she more or less put that to one side, but still occasionally did things.

♪♪ Narrator: Before becoming a housewife, Jill Balcon was a familiar face in historical TV dramas.

Despite her acclaimed performances, she was content to play secondary roles like in this play.

Nell, where is he?

What have they done?

Have they taken him?

I don't know.

I didn't speak.

They know.

I don't know how, but they know.

Day-Lewis: And her father, my grandfather, was appalled when she became an actress.

I mean, he thought it was the next thing to becoming a hooker, as far as he was concerned.

[ Laughter ] ♪♪ Narrator: Paradoxically, this grandfather with old-fashioned ideas was a great pioneer of the British film industry.

Seen here with Charlie Chaplin or Simone Signoret, Sir Michael Balcon founded the famous Ealing Studios and produced some of the great classics in British film.

The main studio, we had three stages.

One large stage and the other two stages.

When I discovered the Ealing comedies, it was quite a revelation to me because my grandfather had long since retired from the business, and as a young kid, he was quite an intimidating character and I don't remember ever having many conversations with him.

Narrator: Daniel grew up in the shadow of this distant, prestigious family, which wasn't without its contradictions.

Having given their son a strict upbringing, his parents suddenly decided to send him to a state school in a nearby working class district.

Day-Lewis: My father had very socialistic leanings.

It was very important to him that his children didn't grow up with these absurd preconceptions.

Because you must be aware of the world that you live in, but no allegiance to one side of the fence or the other.

♪♪ Narrator: Thrust overnight into this working class environment, the model child soon learned to be an actor.

At school, his accent immediately earned him the nickname of Snob.

To blend in, he adopted street language the moment he left the house.

♪♪ His sister accused him of hypocrisy, but for him, it was a question of survival.

In a twist of fate, the role of a young rascal, which he played every day at school, would open up the world of film to him.

In 1971, John Schlesinger noticed him when shooting "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in Daniel's neighborhood.

It was a coincidence that I happened to live in Greenwich.

They were filming in Greenwich, and the local greengrocer, who was a great mate of ours, for some reason, was asked to organize a group of hooligans to play football in Greenwich Park.

I happen to be a footballer, and so, I kicked a ball around and John Schlesinger asked to see a few likely lads for this special job.

♪♪ ♪♪ Boy: Come on, Timothy!

♪♪ Narrator: Unimpressed by his performance, Daniel's parents thought their progressive experiment had gone too far.

Daniel was dispatched to a private boarding school where freedom was replaced with discipline.

But it was within that Spartan environment that the boy would discover his vocation.

Day-Lewis: I had one defining moment, and mine would seem to have an unpromising... aura to it, which was that I was given a bit part in a production of "Cry, The Beloved Country."

I was cast as a little black boy.

That meant that I had to cover my body in makeup, and my face, and wear a little wig.

And the thing that I really loved about this, for that 2 hours a night, you walked onto a place that was flooded with light in an otherwise dark world.

And it was as simple as that.

♪♪ Narrator: Another epiphany came in the form of woodwork, which Daniel came to adore.

On graduation, he was torn between the bright lights of the stage and the calm of the workshop.

I tried to find apprenticeships and I was very fussy.

I was always very fussy about who I wanted to work with.

And there was one designer craftsman in the country who I thought was extraordinary.

And I just waited and he didn't have room in his workshops, and I just decided to go to theatre school.

♪♪ Narrator: In 1975, Daniel entered the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, where his mother had studied in the 1940s, thus following in the family tradition.

♪♪ Day-Lewis: My early years were spent working in the theatre.

I knew that the capacity to do this work was something that was -- it was a delicate thing, whatever it was at one's very core that led one to do this work, I knew that it was not indestructible.

You know it's going to be a tough life.

And from my point of view, I assumed I was going to have a life in the theatre because very few English actors at that time were getting a chance in movies.

Much as I loved films, it never really occurred to me that that would be a part of my life.

We all really thought we were going to work in the theater and maybe do a bit of TV to pay the bills.

♪♪ Narrator: By continuing his training in BBC costume dramas, Daniel Day-Lewis developed his emerging talent and took one more step in his journey towards excellence.

Alan MacNaughtan: I would like things to be clear.

I'd like to know that you'll always do the best for the land.

The land must come first.

It was taken from the people.

I'm not going anywhere, Father.

Narrator: So, nothing was more natural for the gifted young actor than to join the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company.

But having joined the elite of British stage actors, he soon began to have his doubts about this mapped-out career path.

Day-Lewis: Auditions -- this sounds, like, horribly arrogant, but open auditions, I did a couple of those for the RSC and the National, where you sit in a room with 50 other... miserable actors, working on a piece of Shakespeare, and then you walk into a room with seven men, all puffed up with self-importance, and you know, you strut around and they look at you like a specimen of some kind.

And I ended up working for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

I don't know what I was thinking of, but... [ Laughter ] I was seduced.

It was one of those moments, I made a mistake because I had a... I had a nose, I had the right nose for classical theatre.

So, they were always trying to... [ Laughter ] kind of throw a cloak around me and... [ Laughter ] The costume designer on this, I don't know what they were on, but... [ Laughter ] ...they thought, you know, "We want to make these guys young and sexy."

So, they designed this outfit.

I mean, I can't begin to describe it, but it was kind of like leather chaps, which were sort of cut off on the upper thigh.

And then, we had to wear some kind of codpiece in our tights.

You might as well have had, like, a neon sign pointed at your crotch.

[ Laughter ] Narrator: Although he can poke fun at it today, Daniel Day-Lewis began to bend beneath the weight of this elitist culture.

♪♪ Day-Lewis: I mean, English society is so carefully layered.

You're judged by the kind of shoes you wear, and you're certainly judged by the sound that comes out of your mouth when you first open it.

You know, it's just, it's a ridiculous society, one that's going to take many years to dismantle.

♪♪ Narrator: It was in a London theatre that the split between Daniel Day-Lewis and burdensome tradition finally came about.

In 1989, he attacked the daunting monument of Shakespearean drama -- "Hamlet."

A 4-hour play with interminable soliloquies, but more importantly, the demanding role of a man on the edge of the abyss, haunted by the ghost of his murdered father.

This overwhelming father figure opened old wounds inside Daniel Day-Lewis.

♪♪ 17 years earlier, Cecil Day-Lewis had died of cancer before being able to witness his son's first successes.

♪♪ Eaten up by regret, the actor found it hard to bear the torments of a role that rekindled his deeply-buried grief.

♪♪ Gay Byrne: How is "Hamlet" going, then, in the National Theatre, rehearsing at the moment?

That's like climbing a mountain.

Is it?

That's the north face of the Eiger.

Mm.

But um... I feel like one of those guys that they're always lifting off Ben Nevis with inadequate equipment.

D'you know what I... You know, sandals and Bermuda shorts.

But it's, you know, you feel that you're... you're getting somewhere with it, and then, you... slide inexorably back down again.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

Narrator: "Hamlet" is a baptism of fire for every self-respecting Shakespearean actor -- Richard Burton, Laurence Olivier... All to take arms against a sea of troubles.

Narrator: ...Christopher Plummer.

All of the greats who preceded him had confronted it.

...to die.

Narrator: Beneath the pressure of his renowned predecessors, and to better identify with the play's protagonist, every night, Daniel confronted the piercing gaze of his father, whose photo he'd pinned up in his dressing room.

For 7 months, the performances came and went, along with mixed reviews, pushing the actor closer and closer to the edge.

Until one night in September '89, Daniel Day-Lewis suddenly stopped, paralyzed, and left the stage before the end of act one.

An escape referred to only once, years later, in this interview.

I had the strongest impression on that particular night that I was in a dialogue with... with my dead father, um... But uh... that wasn't what stopped me from going back onstage again.

I was really just -- I was exhau-- I was just exhausted.

I was just beyond caring in that moment.

Um, I'd done it enough.

I couldn't do it anymore.

Narrator: Daniel Day-Lewis would never set foot onstage again.

He left without turning back, giving up the realm of eloquence in search of a new promised land.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was in a small, independent film that Daniel Day-Lewis began what would become his trademark, thanks to a story that came out of the blue.

It arrived in a very strange way because... it just arrived one evening through the letterbox, and it was quite dark that evening, and I hadn't turned the lights on.

I don't know why.

And it was a white script and I found it glowing on the doormat, and had no idea where it came from, who it was from, and began to read it, and the first page was one of the most extraordinary first pages of anything I've ever read, because it described in great detail the life of a foot.

Narrator: "My Left Foot" is the true story of Christy Brown, a paralyzed Irish painter and poet who can control only his left foot -- a man struggling to express himself and escape from the fate he seems condemned to.

Daniel Day-Lewis was immediately won over by the character.

[ Drink slurping ] I love you, Eileen.

And I love you, Christy.

No.

I really love you.

It wasn't a predominant feature, his disability.

I was just struck by... ...more than anything else, by his... by his anger at the way in which he was perceived and misunderstood sometimes, and his desire that the record should be set straight, and I felt he was a pioneer in a way.

People are born into a trap and the trap isn't a wheelchair.

The trap is the perceptions that everyone else has.

That's the trap.

♪♪ Good morning, Christy!

Come on in!

Please!

No!

Ya have to.

What do you want me to do?

Tow you behind?

Do you want to ride up front with the driver?

Narrator: To avoid the trap of appearances, Daniel Day-Lewis learned to train his body.

He spent months in a wheelchair, asked the film crew to hoist him onto the set and feed him with a teaspoon -- a capacity for complete immersion, which was unusual in a British actor.

In England, when I was coming up, it was like the only thing that was going to lure you away from the only honorable course as an actor was film.

They were going to sling all kinds of money at you and you were going to invest yourself in an inferior art form.

Like a Faustian bargain.

A Faustian.

You see, by this time, I mean, they didn't understand.

In fact, the prevailing opinion in Britain, I think, is that I am mad.

And the Oscar goes to... [ Clicks tongue ] Mm.

Daniel Day-Lewis in "My Left Foot."

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ Narrator: In the United States, however, nobody questioned his mental health.

And it was there that he earned his first spurs as a movie actor.

You've just provided me with the makings of one hell of a weekend in Dublin.

[ Laughter ] Narrator: America was unanimous.

On the cover of Time magazine, Daniel Day-Lewis was heralded as The Chameleon, a title usually reserved for graduates of the method acting school, that of the Actors Studio, which places body language at the center of the craft.

Daniel admired all of the pioneers, notably Marlon Brando.

He saw him as the absolute model, a genuine alter ego.

[ Crowd shouting ] On one side was the perfect diction of the Shakespearean actor in "Julius Caesar" and "Mutiny on the Bounty."

If I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong and Cassius wrong.

Narrator: And on the other, the protagonist of Elia Kazan's "On the Waterfront," a man who has difficulty finding his words.

I am going to take it out of their skulls.

Narrator: This was the Brando Day-Lewis identified with most.

He, too, could turn silence into an art form.

Martin Scorsese recognized this and offered him a tailor-made part in "The Age of Innocence," a story of violence, that of the polished outward manners and inward wranglings of the 19th century New York upper class.

Only the British Daniel Day-Lewis could portray this aristocratic character held hostage by a hypocritical society.

Joanne Woodward: He understood that, somehow, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and he knew that, now, the whole tribe had rallied around his wife.

He was a prisone in the center of an armed camp.

♪♪ [ Gunshots ] Narrator: Daniel Day-Lewis doesn't need words to act.

He needs to live it.

"The Last of the Mohicans" gave him the chance to immerse himself even further into his character.

Alone in the forest, he learned to hunt like an Indian, to handle weapons, and eat only what he killed himself.

♪♪ ♪♪ [ Gunshot, explosion ] Richard Brown: What I'm simply saying is that you are prepared to get into the skin and do whatever it takes.

The way you put it, it makes it sound much more generous than... than it is, because, of course, you know, I follow my curiosity and it takes me into all kinds of strange places, and I satisfy that curiosity as much as I can when I'm working.

And I do it for the simple reason that there are things I need to know and understand for my own sake, to be able to... if I feel I'm going to take on the life of another man.

Narrator: To better grasp the character of Danny in Jim Sheridan's "The Boxer," Daniel Day-Lewis trained for a long time with Barry McGuigan, the featherweight world champion during the '80s.

Day-Lewis: I worked for a long time with Barry, maybe a year and a half, two years, and for a time before that, with one or two other trainers, to try and learn some of the craft of boxing and to involve myself as closely as I could with the sport of boxing and also with the life of the boxing world.

[ Cheers and applause ] [ Bell rings ] Narrator: Daniel Day-Lewis became so immersed that McGuigan claimed he could probably go the distance with the top ten middleweights in Britain.

For the film crew, as well as audiences, it became impossible to distinguish the athlete from the actor.

[ Crowd cheering, shouting ] As his character has just been released from prison and hasn't seen his former girlfriend for 14 years, Day-Lewis didn't speak to his co-star, Emily Watson, during the first weeks of shooting.

When she finally dared to ask him why he was so intense in his work, he replied, "I don't think I'm a good enough actor to be able not to do it this way."

Why do you stay in character?

Maybe it's pure paganism.

Paganism?

I really don't know.

I mean, I, uh... [ Chuckles ] I can't say for sure that it necessarily... helps me or helps what I'm doing, but at some point, when things begin to grow, I think, um... you have the impression, at least, and it's probably a form of self-delusion, but you have the impression that this life begins to pass through you.

♪♪ Narrator: Often questioned on his specific working methods, the actor talks of his craft as a mystic calling, but few of those who truly understand his degree of intensity.

And even for Daniel Day-Lewis, things can get out of hand.

So, when things have gone too far, he tends to drop off the radar and go into hiding.

I read that, after you had done, I think it was "The Boxer," that you retired from film and you went to Italy, and that you spent years working as a carpenter and as a cobbler.

Did I get that right?

[ Laughter ] My lips are sealed.

Narrator: Even the craziest rumors are sometimes true.

By maintaining the mystery, Daniel Day-Lewis has gradually forged his legendary status.

After a 5-year absence, he agreed to return for Martin Scorsese and the promise of a new transformation even more spectacular than his previous ones.

♪♪ Inhabited by the character of Bill The Butcher to the point of losing the ability to see the difference between reality and fiction, Day-Lewis retreated into himself.

In the eyes of his fellow cast members, his presence became more and more enigmatic and threatening.

Just like the New York gang leader who really existed, Day-Lewis developed a passion for knives and soon became highly skilled at sharpening them.

This is a kill.

This is a kill.

Narrator: On set, he made it a daily discipline, which far from reassured his co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio.

You try.

Go ahead.

Narrator: The love of manual work, the passion of his youth which he has never really lost, is a constant in nearly all of his films, a means for him to give the most of himself... reproducing gestures, even the most everyday ones, to reach a character's soul.

It was with his own tools that he dug the earth in search of oil during the first half hour of "There Will Be Blood."

30 minutes without uttering a single word and painting a primitive picture of the American Dream.

[ Body thuds ] [ Gasping ] No!

Narrator: The injury caused by this very real fall, the pneumonia caught on the set of "Gangs of New York," the back problems ongoing since the shooting of "My Left Foot."

Each film has demanded a sacrifice from Daniel Day-Lewis.

But far from being an obstacle to him, pain is the mark of a successful transformation, and he knows there's a price to pay, as he unequivocally states.

You learn and fill yourself... ...as full as you possibly can with, um... with this life, this other life.

And then, for the purpose of the... the filming itself, the shooting itself, you're really scooping yourself out.

And everybody's doing that in a different way.

And I think it does leave you feeling depleted.

Charlie Rose: Empty.

Yeah, yeah.

Empty.

Yeah.

There's a certain sense of bereavement about it.

It's a different kind of a loss, but there's a certain sense of bereavement about it, I suppose.

Narrator: Grief is a familiar feeling for Daniel Day-Lewis, even if he talks of it here with restraint.

Maybe he felt it again at the end of this movie based on the tumultuous relationship between a father and a son -- a father who loves badly, from a distance, and in silence.

Day-Lewis: I love you, son.

Let's take a look at you.

That's it, that's it.

That's it.

One of the privileges of the work is that you are allowed, with impunity, to explore areas of your soul that might just remain under lock and key.

Narrator: When looking back over his career, the actor admits to having always drawn on his own flaws to nourish his characters.

Because it is my name!

Narrator: The violence depicted by Daniel Day-Lewis on screen has become his signature, going a little further in each role, each time a little more powerfully, until the unworthy father of "There Will Be Blood," whom he filled with all his anger.

I will never backslide.

Man: I was lost, but now, I am found!

I was lost, but now, I am found.

I have abandoned my child!

Say it.

Say it!

I abandoned my child.

Say it louder.

Say it louder!

I've abandoned my child!

I've abandoned my child!

I've abandoned my boy!

[ Applause ] And the Oscar goes to Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood."

[ Cheers and applause ] Narrator: As a virtuoso of excess, Daniel Day-Lewis now has all Hollywood at his feet.

After his second Oscar for "There Will Be Blood," George Clooney, as a good loser, accused him of killing off the competition.

A friendly yet visionary reproach because 6 years later, Daniel Day-Lewis definitively became part of legend.

[ Cheers and applause ] Announcer: Daniel Day-Lewis is the first actor to win three Oscars in the Lead Actor category.

♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: The student has outdone all of his masters, Marlon Brando included.

When we got married 16 years ago, or since we got married 16 years ago, my wife, Rebecca, has lived with some very strange men.

[ Laughter ] I mean, they were strange as individuals and probably even stranger if taken as a group.

But luckily, she's the versatile one in the family and she's been the perfect companion to all of them.

[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪ Narrator: And he owes this unique status in the history of film to a mythical figure of American history.

I am the president of the United States of America, clothed in immense power!

Narrator: Steven Spielberg had envisaged nobody but the British actor to play one of the United States' most emblematic figures, but he had to wait 9 years, 9 years, before Daniel Day-Lewis had the trigger he needed.

He tries to explain it like this.

Day-Lewis: I begin to hear a voice.

It's not a supernatural thing.

[ Laughter ] I hear a voice, if I'm lucky, and this is a voice that is in my mind's ear, so to speak, and that is already... a door opening.

After which, I then try to reproduce that sound.

And then, the main work becomes in trying to discover that voice in one's own body.

Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk... Narrator: By interpreting the legendary orator, Daniel Day-Lewis reconnected with his family history, a certain culture of eloquence and solemnity.

...as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said.

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Narrator: And to find Lincoln's voice, he dug into his most extreme depths.

Day-Lewis: With the voice being such a deep personal reflection of character, of who we are.

And that voice may be quite a surprising reflection of who we seem to be in some cases, but it is, undoubtedly, it's kind of a fingerprint of the soul.

Narrator: By bringing the greatest president of the United States back to life, Daniel Day-Lewis completed a series of roles from American mythology -- pioneers, gang leaders, and gold diggers whose stories tell of the birth of a nation to which the actor feels viscerally close.

Since his part in "The Last of the Mohicans," American history has fascinated him much more than that of his homeland -- the history of a new world criss-crossed by violence, a quest for freedom and wild nature reflecting the actor he has become.

Daniel Day-Lewis has thus blended into American heritage in every way -- on screen, but also by joining one of the great dynasties of the Hollywood motion picture industry.

It was during the shooting of "The Crucible," adapted from the play by Arthur Miller, that Daniel Day-Lewis met the eminent playwright, a simple man whose vast culture and fame had still left him accessible.

Alongside him, he found a new family, which he definitively integrated by marrying the playwright's daughter, the director, Rebecca Miller.

A literary heir, like him, and the only person to understand his total commitment to his craft.

Nearly 10 years after their wedding, he finally agreed to play, for her, a sensitive, dying man who lives on a secluded island.

♪ Seen a shootin' star tonight ♪ ♪ And I thought of you ♪ ♪ You're trying to break into another world ♪ ♪ A world I never knew ♪ ♪ I always kinda wonder if you ever made it... ♪ "The Ballad of Jack and Rose" is perhaps the only movie that has managed to capture the fragile nature of Daniel Day-Lewis... ...and his permanent doubt, which has forced him into a kind of habitual semi-retirement after completing each shoot.

Far from being a movie star's whim or a ploy to make him even more sought-after, isolation is the only way to preserve himself.

[ Photographers shouting ] Day-Lewis: The voice becomes fainter sometimes, the voice that you try to listen to when you're deciding when something is good and when something is bad, when you need to do something and when you think you need to do something.

Sometimes, that voice becomes obscured because people make a lot of noise, there are a lot of mouths around, particularly in this business.

And those mouths make a lot of noise and you have to -- It's very distracting.

I don't like noise.

[ Shouting grows louder ] ♪♪ Narrator: For an actor who has always obstinately refused movie star status, fame weighs heavily on him, but he vanishes after each shoot to chase out the ghosts that haunt him and to learn to be himself again, as he confesses in this interview.

Day-Lewis: The only analogy I've ever found that vaguely kind of seemed to fit for me was the idea of leaving a field lying fallow because you just can't grow anything in it anymore.

And... And I think it's as much that as anything else.

And even from quite early on, long before I had the luxury of choice, I was given this gift of this tiny piece of self-knowledge, which, uh... which told me that I couldn't just keep doing that thing.

If I were going to keep doing it over a long period of time, I would have to stay away from it, as well.

Narrator: It's in Ireland that Daniel Day-Lewis has found his own secluded island, far from the tumult of Hollywood.

A citizen of the country since 1993, he settled there with his wife and two sons in a remote manor house in the middle of barren heathland.

It's there that he feels free and at peace.

He leads a tranquil life where fond memories resurface, for one of the reasons Daniel Day-Lewis has made Ireland his refuge is because it was the holiday land of his childhood years.

Day-Lewis: I suppose I was probably 4 years old when I first went with my father, with my family, to the west of Ireland.

From an early age, we began to think of it as being a place that was, if not home, certainly as close to home, and perhaps something almost better than home, which was a sanctuary, a place that you could escape to and always find what you were looking for, a certain quietude.

Narrator: It was the same quietude that his father, Cecil Day-Lewis, sought in Ireland, his native land, which he always regretted leaving, and about which he wrote a huge amount.

Far from his study and his books, Cecil Day-Lewis seemed more present, more affectionate.

For the children, holidays were an enchanted parenthesis which enabled them to forget their father's illness for a while, as captured in these happy family snapshots from the time.

He was ill pretty consistently for about 9 years, I think, before he died.

I mean, not all the time, but one thing led to another.

And um, I think I was probably about 5 years old when he was, as I remember him, as a healthy man.

The later, never mind the later!

I've been like this since I was 7!

I remember Mommy said to me, "Don't upset yourself.

He's not well."

He's not well, so we tip-toe around the house like this.

Like that, around the house.

Not well.

Not well.

You know, he's not well.

Then, I got Holy Communion.

I thought I was eating you alive.

Is it my fault you weren't well?

Why did he have to be sick all your life, Giuseppe?

Narrator: It was alongside Pete Postlethwaite, his first mentor from his early days in film, that Daniel was able to ward off this old wound.

I was delighted!

Narrator: Shot in 1992, "In the Name of the Father" is set between Northern Ireland and England.

It's the story of a late reconciliation between father and son, both locked up in the same prison.

The film served as a catharsis for the actor and allowed him to dig up from his memory a few forgotten moments of intimacy with his own father.

♪♪ What I remember most about my childhood is... holding your hand.

My wee hand in your big hand... and the smell of tobacco, I remember the... I could smell the tobacco off the palm of your hand.

When I want to feel happy, I try to remember the smell of tobacco.

Hold my hand.

Get the fuck... And you never really, you say, got to know him as a buddy.

Not -- well, not in... I mean, in a way that you know people without speaking to them, of course.

And in some respects, he was a very affectionate man, but um... but distant, also, by necessity, I think, because of his work.

Perhaps because of his greater age, also, it made it harder, I don't know, but um... Now, I would love to be able to speak to him.

Narrator: The shadow of this distant, uneven relationship runs through Daniel Day-Lewis's filmography like a discreet, but constant, leitmotif.

Roles of imperfect fathers, but loving ones, in spite of all, like echoes of his own history.

♪♪ ♪♪ Day-Lewis: "Forgive my coldnesses, now past recall, angers, injustice, moods contrary, mean or blind, and best, my dears, forgive yourselves when I am gone, for all love signals you ignored, and for the fugitive openings you never took into my mind."

Narrator: Age 60 when recording for posterity a poem his father wrote for him, Daniel Day-Lewis finally seemed to accept his heritage.

In this character, who criss-crosses the roads of England, the actor somehow returned to where it all began.

Set in early 1950s London, "Phantom Thread" is a testamentary film which marks the apotheosis of his career.

♪♪ In one of the last interviews given to the press in 2017, Day-Lewis explained why he had returned to his homeland.

For a long time, he'd shied away from films which reminded him too much of the world he sought to escape.

Tea shops, Shakespeare classics, "Downton Abbey."

But over time, stories have resurfaced, those that his parents told him when he was small about their life in London in the aftermath of World War II.

♪♪ "Phantom Thread" offered the actor the chance of a final, nostalgic walk down memory lane in the role of a man who shows an astonishing resemblance to his father, a creative, self-centered spirit.

Please don't move so much, Alma.

I'm buttering my toast.

I'm not moving too much.

It's too much.

It's a distraction.

It's very distracting.

Maybe you pay too much attention to it.

It's hard to ignore.

It's as if you just rode a horse across the room.

There's too much movement.

There's entirely too much movement at breakfast.

Narrator: Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Daniel Day-Lewis fills the character, Reynolds Woodcock, with all his obsessions, resulting in one of the most personal of his roles -- a man consumed by his craft whose quest for perfection both feeds him and devours him in equal measures.

An anxious man forever haunted by the death of his mother.

♪♪ Day-Lewis: Are you always here?

♪♪ I miss you.

I think about you all the time.

♪♪ I hear your voice say my name when I dream.

And when I wake up, there are tears streaming down my face.

♪♪ Narrator: At the end of the shooting, the actor collapsed, exhausted, and weighed down by melancholy.

Since then, Daniel Day-Lewis has been in his Irish retreat, an heir without a kingdom who has finally made peace with his history.

A rare and ungraspable actor, he continues to cultivate secrecy until his next transformation.

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